WORTH NOTING ON TV

ByAlan BunceMay 14, 1992

SATURDAY

Comic Relief V (HBO, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., ET): Only when they mass forces for a cause like homelessness will you find as huge a collection of stars as the ones performing here. The fifth in the series finds comedians from Roseanne Arnold and Jay Leno to Don Rickles and Dick Van Dyke performing in stand-up acts and group sketches. The hosts are Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robin Williams. MONDAY

Bird on a Wire (NBC, 8:30-11 p.m.): It may not have gotten strong reviews when it opened in 1990, but this comedy-action film - having its network debut - does have Mel Gibson as a drug-case informant living incognito under a witness protection program. And it does have Goldie Hawn as an old girlfriend who bumps into him at the gas station where he works. Guess whether she recognizes him, and whether it triggers a long chase with lots of close escapes, and, finally, whether their romance is reignited. WEDNESDAY

American Playhouse (PBS, 9-10:30 p.m.): The inner desperation of a middle-aged woman becomes outer violence in "Mrs. Cage," Nancy Barr's TV adaptation of her play about a housewife who shoots another woman at a supermarket. The drama was being done in a little walk-up stage in Los Angeles when Anne Bancroft was shown the script. She quickly agreed to play the title role, a woman watching her life's value trampled under by a new generation. Hector Elizondo is the police detective whose interrogation of Mr s. Cage unearths the feelings leading to the crime.